Confed Cup: No suspects in hotel theft

No one has yet been identified as responsible for the alleged theft of money from the Egyptian national soccer team’s hotel rooms, police said on Monday.

Briefing journalists in Pretoria on the Confederations Cup security operations, police Deputy National Commissioner Andre Pruis said: “No suspect has been identified and the hotel staff members who had access to the rooms have been completely cleared through fingerprint and polygraph tests.”

He said the case had been forwarded to the director of public prosecutions for a decision.

“We have not closed the case. We have referred it to the director of public prosecutions for them to take a decision and not us.”

He said hotel staff had twice passed polygraph tests and this indicated to police they had not tampered with the Egyptians’ rooms.

“We don’t have a suspect.”

He said footage obtained from the hotel indicated that no person other than the Egyptian team, two children of the coaching staff and hotel staff members had access to the rooms of the hotel in Illovo, Johannesburg.

He said the footage also indicated that no women had accompanied players into their rooms.

The deputy commissioner said no major security breach occurred during the Confederations Cup.

“There had been 39 cases reported, of which 29 of them were theft relating to cellphones, five were robberies, one case of reckless driving and two cases of corruption in which it has been alleged that police officials were asking for foreign currency from the visitors,” he said.—Sapa